Kenya: Blast in refugee camp claims policeman,several wounded

A suspected remote-controlled bomb in Kenya’s Dadaab refugee complex near the border with Somalia killed one police officer and seriously wounded two others on Monday, police and a private security company employee said.

Several witnesses initially said three policemen had been killed in the blast, the latest in a wave of low-level bomb and grenade attacks in areas close to Somalia after Kenya sent troops across the frontier to fight al Qaeda-linked Islamist rebels.

Dadaab deputy police chief Nelson Kaliti said one policeman was killed in the blast, which was suspected to be a roadside bomb. A private security employee confirmed the death toll to Reuters.

“We heard an explosion and on our arrival saw the vehicle ripped in two. The front part of the wreckage was lying on top of the mutilated body of the driver,” a supervisor for the G4S private security group, who declined to be named, told Reuters.

“Two other badly wounded policemen were pulled out of the wreckage,” he said.

Earlier a refugee community leader told Reuters three policemed had died in the attack, which occurred in ‘Borehole 3’, an area within the sprawling Hagadera camp, part of the Dadaab complex.

Medics said the wounded had been taken to a hospital run by the International Rescue Committee.

Hagadera has witnessed a number of attacks in recent months. Last month a remote-controlled bomb blew up a police vehicle escorting a U.N. convoy near Hagadera. In October two Spanish aid workers for Medecins Sans Frontieres were kidnapped from Dadaab.

Located about 100 km (60 miles) from the Somali border, Dadaab was set up in 1991 to house Somalis fleeing violence in their country. The camp’s population has swollen to more than 460,000 people this year because of famine in the lawless country.